Dr Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

Chandrasekhar was born on 19 October 1910 in Lahore; Punjab; Pakistan in a Tamil family; to Sitalakshmi (1891–1931) and Chandrasekhara Subrahmanya (1885–1960) who was posted in Lahore as Deputy Auditor General of the Northwestern Railways at the time of Chandrasekhar's birth. He was the eldest of their four sons and the third of their ten children. His paternal uncle was the Indian physicist and Nobel laureate C. V. Raman. In January 1937; Chandrasekhar was recruited to the University of Chicago faculty as Assistant Professor by Dr. Otto Struve and President Robert Maynard Hutchins. He was to remain at the university for his entire career; becoming Morton D. Hull Distinguished Service Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics in 1952 and attaining emeritus status in 1985. Professor Chandrasekhar was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983 for his studies on the physical processes important to the structure and evolution of stars. Chandrasekhar died of a sudden heart attack at the University of Chicago Hospital in 1995; and was survived by his wife; Lalitha Chandrasekhar; who died on September 2; 2013 at the age of 102.

Excerpts from Chandra-father correspondence: 1928-1933 -- Excerpts from Chandra-father correspondence: 1934-1936 -- Excerpts from K.S. Krishnan correspondence: 1934-1938 -- Miscellaneous letters -- Chandra and Eddington correspondence from 1933-1943 -- Rosenfeld correspondence: January and February 1935 -- Selected correspondence between Lalitha and Chandra 1930-1934 -- Selected correspondence from Lalitha 1935.

This book by a Nobel Laureate provides the foundation for analysis of stellar atmospheres, planetary illumination, and sky radiation. Suitable for students and professionals in physics, nuclear physics, astrophysics, and atmospheric studies. 1950 edition.

In January 1937, Nobel laureate in Physics Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was recruited to the University of Chicago. He was to remain there for his entire career, becoming Morton D. Hull Distinguished Service Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics in 1952 and attaining emeritus status in 1985. This is where his then student Ed Spiegel met him during the summer of 1954, attended his lectures on turbulence and jotted down the notes in hand. His lectures had a twofold purpose: they not only provided a very elementary introduction to some aspects of the subject for novices, they also allowed Chandra to organize his thoughts in preparation to formulating his attack on the statistical problem of homogeneous turbulence. After each lecture Ed Spiegel transcribed the notes and filled in the details of the derivations that Chandrasekhar had not included, trying to preserve the spirit of his presentation and even adding some of his side remarks. The lectures were rather impromptu and the notes as presented here are as they were set down originally in 1954. Now they are being made generally available for Chandrasekhar’s centennial.

The third volume collecting the significant papers of the astrophysicist and Nobel laureate. The papers are grouped into four sections: dynamical friction and Brownian motion; statistical problems in astonomy; the statistical theory of turbulence; and hydromagnetic problems in astrophysics. Includes a brief foreword by mathematician Norman R. Lebovitz. Not indexed. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This is the fifth of six volumes collecting significant papers of the distinguished astrophysicist and Nobel laureate S. Chandrasekhar. His work is notable for its breadth as well as for its brilliance; his practice has been to change his focus from time to time to pursue new areas of research. The result has been a prolific career full of discoveries and insights, some of which are only now being fully appreciated. Chandrasekhar has selected papers that trace the development of his ideas and that present aspects of his work not fully covered in the books he has periodically published to summarize his research in each area. Volume 5 covers all of Chandrasekhar's contributions to the general theory of relativity and relativity's astrophysical applications (except his research on black holes and colliding gravitational waves, which is covered in Volume 6). The major topics include the influence of general relativity on the pulsations and stability of stars; the back reaction of gravitational waves on their sources; and post-Newtonian approximations to general relativity and their astrophysical applications. In addition to research papers, the volume includes two 1972 lectures in which Chandrasekhar assessed the past, present, and future of relativistic astrophysics. The foreword by astrophysicist Kip S. Thorne is an absorbing, brief history of the field since 1961, capturing the atmosphere of the early research and clarifying Chandrasekhar's dominant role in it. Chandrasekhar has never written a monograph synthesizing his research in relativistic astrophysics, and therefore this volume of his papers serves as a summary of that work for students and more senior researchers.

Rigorous examination of relationship between loss of energy, mass, and radius of stars in a steady state. Unabridged, corrected republication of original (1939) edition. "The material is throughout presented with enviable crispness and clarity of expression. The work will undoubtedly become an indispensable handbook for future researchers in the field." — Nature.

This is the first of six volumes collecting significant papers of the distinguished astrophysicist and Nobel laureate S. Chandrasekhar. His work is notable for its breadth as well as for its brilliance; his practice has been to change his focus from time to time to pursue new areas of research. The result has been a prolific career full of discoveries and insights, some of which are only now being fully appreciated. Chandrasekhar has selected papers that trace the development of his ideas and that present aspects of his work not fully covered in the books he has periodically published to summarize his research in each area.